Metro: Sons of Lycurgus
by Esquire 6
Summary: There are many stories of the Rangers of the Spartan Order. In the Moscow Metro, they are the elite Stalkers that go where others dare not to. A group of heroes who serve as the beacon of light of the good the people of the Metro can accomplish. For if it was not them, then who? [Cancelled]


**AN/: Hello everyone, and welcome to my Sons of Lycurgus project. This has been something I've been working through for a little while now, after completing my play-throughs of Metro Exodus. Exodus really inspired me to start working on material in the Metro universe which I've come to really love and enjoy from 2033, Last Light, and Exodus. I decided to fill in the blanks, at least how I think some things would have worked out in the aftermath of the majority of the Spartan Order leaving Moscow with Artyom. The vehicle for the first part of this story is Letyaga, one of Artyom's closest allies from the book, Metro 2035, with my own personal twist on his story. I wanted to give a more first person insight into some of what the average Spartan Order member would experience day-to-day as well as what the void left by the Aurora crew would have affected the remaining few real Spartans left in the Moscow Metro. My plan right now is for maybe three or four chapters worth of independent material where each chapter can stand independently as their own unique snapshots of the Metro world. This first one is inspired by the _Kshatriya._**

**I may expand the story into a possible return of Artyom and the Aurora crew to Moscow to counter the Invisible Watchers, but I'm not really sure yet. **

**Anyways, enjoy the material!**

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_**Letyaga: Agoge**_

One breath.

In. out.

Even though I had made this journey up into Moscow's Great Library several times before, it still racked up my nerves. Every trip up to the surface was another part of the test, the test to join the mythic Spartan Order, to become a Spartan, a Ranger. They were stalkers of a different breed, and almost lived on the surface with how much they worked up there in the radiation and storms that beckoned to the dangerous, the reckless, and the brave.

Stalking was the profession of maniacs.

And I was one of them.

For four years, ever since I had turned 18, I had gone up alone. I had lived in Polis, somewhat aimlessly. I was trying to make a name for myself, one that would last beyond the short time we all knew we had in the Metro. And to some extent I succeeded. Letyaga became a name of a crazy stalker who went places others dared not go. And even after the exploits of Artyom against the Dark Ones, stories of my exploits were still told, and I still was happy to tell them too.

I finally got an invitation for a . . . "try-out" of sorts to join the Order, since I had been put into a leadership position among the Kshatriya militia in Polis. My reputation had started talking loud enough that the old man in charge of the Spartan Order, Colonel Miller, decided to give me a shot.

And a shot he certainly gave me.

I was given a job. I was ordered personally by Miller to carry out a stalker mission into the Great Library, a haven of mutants and monsters alike, from the Nosalies, to the fearsome ape-like giant Librarians.

And if I did well enough, I had a chance to become a real Ranger.

The only way in from Polis to the Library was from the dried-up sewers. And they were crawling with mutants.

My friends always joked with me about what day would have to come in order for me to stop being a Stalker, what girl would have to capture my attention to take me away from that eternal quest to the surface, to see the gifts the old world left behind.

As I stepped out past the open airlock from the Polis base, only a single word answer crossed my mind.

_Nothing._

I pulled my Kalash assault rifle off my back and gripped it tightly as I proceeded down the tunnel-way, lit by lightbulbs that I had attached to the old-rusting sockets. A small green laser beam snaked out far in front of my rifle, ready to snap to any unfortunate target that came into my path. After a few minutes of deathly silence, I came upon an open and unlocked manhole cover, one of the benefits of my many trips into the bowels of the Great Library.

I re-slung my rifle as I turned myself to climb down the ladder, into the archives of the library. The light from the tunnel faded from my eyes as I stepped lower and lower, eventually bringing myself into a large concrete ruin, torn and ravaged by age and the force of the atomic bombs that had destroyed the city.

Now, the real journey begins.

From my recently purchased armored helmet, I flipped down my pair of night-vision goggles, which quickly illuminated the whole area, and made my laser on my Kalash shine even brighter through the darkness. I slowly stepped forward, down into the lower level of the room, which was covered in lots of dirt, from what looked like the digging of the librarians.

I poked around the next left-hand corner into the next room, leading with my rifle, and found nothing dangerous waiting for me. I sighed with relief as the green-fluorescent glow of the mushrooms that flourished in this hellish environment greeted me, glowing on and on without caring for anyone that happened by them.

A couple of bodies of the poor souls that got trapped down here by the bombs also welcomed me. Men, women, and children. I scavenged what little they had left behind, bits of scrap that could help others in Polis survive now. I'm sure if they knew their things would be passed on to help others who still struggled in the Metro, they would've let their belongings go without hesitation. I kept moving further into the ruins of archives once my scavenging was complete, rounding a left-handed corner again, but this time, there was something.

My eyes bulged slightly from behind my goggles as my stomach threatened to regurgitate part of my dinner.

It was a Librarian. A hulking, towering monstrosity, with massive, muscled arms and a bloody, tooth filled face. But the librarian I saw this time was different.

The Librarian was sleeping, curled up in a corner further down the passageway. Usually they were up and about, lurking, ready to fend off intruders from their territory. But it was sobering seeing one of them like this, helpless. I dropped my rifle, the laser moving away from its rising and falling head as it breathed. I turned my head back over my right shoulder and saw another way, with a dead fellow stalker slumped up against a ladder out of this librarian's home. I took a moment to look back and see if I had awakened the librarian, and once I was satisfied, I wheeled and jogged towards the direction of the ladder. My breathing intensified the longer I kept my back to the librarian.

Turning your back on a librarian was probably the greatest sin a stalker could commit when traversing the Great Library. Anyone foolish enough to do so would quickly end up dead. For some reason the librarians would hesitate to attack anyone who locked eyes with them. My first encounter staring a librarian down scared me a lot, I have to admit. When I stared back into the eyes of that monstrosity, it felt like a century had passed when the librarian finally got bored and walked away, growling and almost mumbling incoherently in something that resembled human speech.

This stalker seemed to have not heeded the words of others, as he had been tantalized by the mechanical parts he had found, which were in tip-top condition somehow. I placed them into my backpack, and after one more check on the sleeping librarian. I climbed up the ladder, away from what I thought would be the last run of trouble before the archive vaults.

After clearing a few rooms and scavenging some ammo from the first few rooms I hurried through, my guess felt vindicated. One more area, according to my map, and I'd be home free up into the vault room.

Boy, was I _absolutely_ wrong.

This time there was a Librarian.

And he wasn't asleep. As soon as I rounded the corner, he was there, growling and roaring at me maybe only 5-10 meters away. I leveled my rifle at the librarian's head, but I didn't dare fire. Shooting could only save me at absolute point blank range, and would take a whole magazine. Even so, I much preferred to stare the beast down and let it walk away, and make a break for the doorway towards the end of the decently sized room.

There were some exposed pillars over towards the right, and I backed myself up in that direction, slowly, taking each step gingerly. The Librarian continued roaring in my direction, its hands pounding incessantly into the ground. I had almost put myself in the complete corner of the room, and I was sweating bullets as the librarian neared, the bloody mouth showing me firsthand what I already knew a librarian was capable of.

But it stopped.

It looked me over for a few minutes as I refused to move my gaze away. The librarian seemed intrigued that I had kept going this long, and that curiosity quickly turned into boredom, as the librarian gave one final huff and stood up on its hind legs and walked away, heading towards a large hole in the concrete walls and disappeared.

I lowered my rifle and breathed again. I had stared death in the face again and survived. I didn't waste any time celebrating though.

Another ladder beckoned for me up into the vault room of the archives. I hustled over that way, and scurried like a rat up the ladder. I was desperate to get out. I found a power switch and flipped it on, and to my relief, what turned out to be the vault room lit up somewhat in a warm orange glow. I slowly proceeded through, the green laser wavering from the interference, and one of the vault rooms in particular seemed to be the most tempting towards the end of the large room on the left side.

I checked the corner and walked in, and found something I scarcely believed actually existed.

When Shaman joked that I shouldn't bother looking for the "Map of the Secret Metro", I laughed along with him. That map was an urban legend that stalkers had passed between each other for years, hoping that one day, one of us could find it and earn immortality as one of the greatest stalkers to ever walk the Moscow Metro.

And here it was. A white book left lying on the floor, forgotten. On the front, large black text read: "METRO-2: LAYOUT PLANNING AND DETAILS". I scooped up the book into my bag and couldn't help but smile to myself at my luck.

But then, my luck quickly decided to leave me high and dry.

The Librarian I had stared down, decided to come running back to outside the vault door and immediately tried to force itself through the doorway. The Librarian didn't appear to like the idea of letting me walk away this time. But my luck came back slightly, as the monster struggled to get through the doorway of the vault.

"Screw it."

I shouldered my Kalash, loaded a full magazine of my precious military-grade rounds and opened fire as soon as my green laser landed on the Librarian's head. My Kalash roared to life, spitting fire and lead towards the Librarian, which roared in pain as the 5.45 rounds smashed into its skull. It kept fighting through the doorway and was almost breaking through as my Kalash's mag emptied. I cast my rifle down to the floor as I pulled out my revolver and opened fire, and the Librarian finally broke through the door, roaring even louder as it bounded towards me. I dove for the opposite side of the room as the incendiary rounds of my revolver finally caught the Librarian alight and the monster desperately tried to put the flames out as it rolled on the floor, engulfing some of the papers in the vault in flames.

_How much do I want to bet that this whole place is going to burn now?_

I quickly picked up my discarded Kalash and loaded a new magazine as I hurried out of the vault and sprinted towards another doorway that looked to be the way out. I kept running as I heard a roar behind me, and in the split-second I looked back I saw the Librarian at full speed chasing after me.

I found a staircase in the next room, separated by a several meter gap. Using what precious time I had left, I traced back my steps then made a running leap for the stairs, making it with ease. I hurried up the flights as another roar from the Librarian reverberated through the whole building as I kept running. And finally, I heard the howling of the wind from the surface, and before I barged through the last door holding me in, I put on my gas mask, and kicked the door open.

I found myself in the first building I had explored in the Great Library complex, and my prior knowledge helped me in making my way back down into the sewers, down a ladder that placed me not far from the manhole cover I had crawled down back into the archives.

This time as my steps echoed loudly through the tunnels, I could hear the mutants coming. The nosalies wanted one last shot to take me out at the airlock door. As I arrived, I mashed the green button to unlock the airlock and a loud buzz sounded. A few seconds later, a siren sounded indicating the door would take a few more precious seconds to open.

"I _hate _this door!" I grumbled as I pulled out my Shambler, loading it full of Dragon-breath shotgun rounds.

A group of four nosalies, the four-legged mole monsters of the tunnels, dashed towards me, desperate to get a piece of me.

I responded with bursts of flame as I unloaded six rounds in a matter of seconds on the group, sending the beasts burning and tumbling back down onto the floor, and the ones that still moved after that, I fired my Kalash into them to finish them off. But then, out of seemingly nowhere, a nosalis jumped onto my back and threw me down to the ground. I rolled over, attempting to knock the beast off-balance, but it quickly latched onto me. I threw my fists towards the nosalis' head, desperately hoping I could save myself from being this mutated mutt's dinner. But then a loud blast went off near my right ear, deafening me. Whatever the blast was sent the nosalis tumbling lifelessly to the ground next to me.

"Letyaga, Letyaga! You ok?" a voice called from behind me. I strained my neck to see the brown-haired twins Bar and Su, the other stalkers assigned to the Great Library, running in from behind the now open airlock door. After dusting myself off, Bar helped me to my feet, and Su turned his attention to the tunnel-way as we all went back through the airlock and shut the door.

"Good hunting today, Letyaga, eh?" Bar smiled as he gave me a slap on the shoulder

"You can say that again!" I barked back with a laugh, "The Map of the Secret Metro better be worth the trouble of tangling with a Librarian!"

"Wait, you really found it?" Su asked, his eyes betraying his astonishment.

"You better believe I found the damn thing," I snorted back, "And I better get a hell of a reward for this shit."

The two brothers stood there utterly shocked and speechless as I headed into the equipment room to find Shaman in the corner with the horde of items I had scavenged from the Library.

"Ah, Letyaga!" the bald, older man cooed from behind his glasses and radiation suit, "Find anything good?"

"I'm not going to beat around the bush," I said bluntly as I dropped my bag onto the floor, opened it, and threw the Metro-2 map book at him, "_I_ found it. I found _the _Map of the Secret Metro."

Now it was Shaman's turn to be dumbfounded.

"How . . . how did you . . . where?"

"It was in the archive vaults. I had to fight it out with a Librarian and haul ass out of there before it turned me into a puddle of blood and guts."

"Well . . . the Colonel will definitely want to see this . . . personally," Shaman said, the usual jolliness in his voice having been replaced by a more earnest tone, "Take it to him. I think it should serve nicely as your ticket into the Order. Well done, Letyaga."

I smiled back as I placed the Map book back into my bag and hoisted it onto my shoulders.

"About time you idiots saw the truth."

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**AN/: I hope you enjoyed this journey into the Metro! Please do not hesitate to let me know what you think of it!**

_**Esquire 6**_


End file.
